The Quilt Show

I have a secret that I have been keeping for several months.  I wasn't told to keep it a secret, but I guess I was afraid if I shared it with the world at large that it would disappear.  I was invited to be a guest on The Quilt Show.  It's an internet subscription quilting show with two of the quilting world's superstars - Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims.  They saw my upcoming book, Quilt Fiesta, at the Spring wholesale quilt market.  In addition to my quilt inspired by Mexican tiles, they also were very interested in my OyVey! Quilt Designs and Judaic patterns.  Alex's son had recently married a Jewish woman who was born in Israel and she had a keen interest in what the quilting wold had to offer for the Jewish community.

Two of my wonderful friends flew out to Boulder Colorado, the day before the taping, with me from Philly to help.  Thank goodness for friends.

We stopped at the studio first to unpack my quilts. Torah covers and demo items  THEY HAD A SHELF WITH MY NAME ON IT!  I know it's only a paper label on a wire rack shelf, but it was really exciting to see mt name.  Reality.

We returned the next day for the taping.  I met some of the people that I had talked with on the phone.  I met Alex and Ricky.  And I met Darra  Williamson.  They tape 2 shows in one day.  Darra was the morning guest who wrote a book with Christine Porter about a modernized version of 12 months in the life of Sunbonnet Sue.  It was a good idea to watch her throughout the process.  She was a great role model.  You can see some of her quilts behind her on the set.

The audience of 40 people were the same for both the morning and afternoon taping.  Prior to both tapings, they "taught" the audience how to clap and laugh and show intense interest.  The set had 3 areas for different segments.  Most of the audience was local.  At the lunch break, they changed their clothes and then took different seats in the audience. 




The main demo for my show was about the secondary patterns formed where the corners of my "Mexican tiles" came together.  I put in a lot of time making a low tech, medium tech and high teach version of how to visualize this.  I brought every single quilt that was in the book.  I brought all of the Torah covers I had ever made.  And all the quilts from patterns that I had ever written.  To say I was prepared was an understatement.  The only thing I didn't know was how it was going to be presented and what we were going to use.  I had a brief conversation with Alex and Ricky during the morning.

But we didn't get specific.  The audience went to lunch.  The crew had lunch.  We all had lunch.  It was 2PM and I still didn't know what we were going to use.  To say I was nervous was an understatement.  But then it was my turn.  Ricky, Alex and I chose the quilts to be hung on the set.  We talked about the opening segment.  We talked about an opening and then about what to say to segue way into the next segment.  And then it was time.  My buddies were ready in the audience in the Princess chairs.

We filmed 4 segments and an after the show segment.  We started taping around 2:30 and went until 5:30.  Before each segment, we talked about what we were going to do and I just followed their lead.  Ricky and Alex were just awesome and definitely knew what they were doing.  We had a wonderful producer, Shelly Heesacker, who led us in and out of every segment, among many other things. (She is also a producer for Oprah and Dr. Phil.)  I started with a pit in my stomach that started at the base of my chin that slowly disappeared over the course of the afternoon.  It is still an unreal experience and my feet still have not touched the ground.

If you want to see a little bit of the fist 4 shows they taped go to The Quilt Show blog and scroll down to the Aug 10th posting.    After they finish taping this season and editing the shows, they will decide the order in which the shows will be aired in 2011.  Then we'll know when  it's my turn.  I'll keep you posted!